How to Get Out of Iraq

In 1967, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley told President Lyndon Johnson that he needed to remove the 500,000 U.S. troops then involved in Vietnam’s civil war. When Johnson responded by asking how he could do that, Daley replied, “Put them on a [expletive deleted] plane and bring them home.”

It is time to follow Daley’s advice [in Iraq]. These multiple conflicts cannot be resolved by American military power. In fact, every time we deal with one conflict we make another worse.

That’s from Larry Korb’s article on getting out of Iraq, and I say: Indeed. Obviously, any large military operation is logistically complicated. But a lot of people seem to have developed mental blocks — real or imagined — around the fact that yes we can actually decide that Iraq is going to become one of any number of troubled countries that gets along for better or for worse without 130,000 American soldiers hanging around. All it takes is a president who actually wants our forces to leave.